The Geotones continued to evolve and players came and went but the best part of it for me was forming close friendships with bass player Andy Groag, drummer John Speisberger, singer Candy Lane, and especially keyboard and sax player and lead singer Tim Ling. Tim worked at USGS but his personal story was quite amazing. His dad was a very well known university professor in Peking and his mom was a famous classical concert pianist in China. They had barely escaped China during the communist takeover in 1949, moving to Philadelphia where Tim was born.

Tim was one of the most incredible and wonderful people I've ever met. His mother had encouraged him to play cello at an early age, along with piano and sax. He was offered a full scholarship at Curtis Institute of Music but he chose to study science instead and when I met him he was one of the most respected scientists at USGS in Woods Hole.

But Tim was something else too - a kid who was way more American than most of us in spite of being of Chinese heritage. He knew every character of every TV show in the 1960s, had an infectious sense of humor and was absolutely loved by everyone he came in contact with, including my son Matt when Matt was a little boy. Tim was a big guy, which made him even more "larger than life." In terms of pop culture in this country, he was an absolute student and lover of American pop music and jazz - and he could play ANY of it really, really well. His "Chinese Elvis" is still talked about by those of us who were lucky enough to experience his hilarious and amazing performances.

Tim, Andy, John, Candy and I split off from the Geotones to form a band called "Bits n' Pieces" (after the old Dave Clark Five song), playing a mix of all types of 1960s music. It was the most pure fun I've ever had in any music group and we developed quite a local following, playing places like the now long-gone Hunt Club and Molly's, which became more or less our home base. We were pretty good and worked hard on getting our versions of the tunes as close to the originals as possible. It was with Bits n' Pieces that I learned the importance of tight playing, including definite beginnings and endings to songs, planned solos and responding to the other players in a band, something we practiced diligently.

Perhaps our most memorable gig was a wedding we played in Upstate New York. The bride was someone who had worked with Tim and Candy at USGS and she was determined to have us play the reception regardless of the cost. It was like something out of a situation comedy or perhaps an Adam Sandler movie.

The reception was to be held under a large rented tent in the bride's parents' back yard. I don't think we had even unloaded our equipment when the father of the bride came out of the house to greet us, with a huge pitcher of beer in each hand, which he all but demanded we drink. I knew this one was going to be "Fun, Fun, Fun"!!

The beer kept flowing as we set up. Then it began to rain. The wedding over, guests began arriving and filled with tent. We began to play.

The details are a little hazy from that point on, but I do clearly remember finishing one set with "Born to be Wild" and Yours Truly climbing on top of my Fender Showman amp and trying to play the fastest, loudest and craziest solo ever. By that point the grass dance floor had turned to mud and I remember the bride and bridesmaids kicking off their shoes and dancing barefoot in the mud. Rock n' roll, baby!!

The next day we had to make the long trek back to the Cape and thank goodness I wasn't driving because my head felt like someone had taken a sledge hammer to it. I think we all felt the same but it was the most fun gig I've ever played.

A year or so later Tim (who was a couple credits short of a Doctorate in Marine Science) announced he had decided to ditch the whole science thing and try to actually make money. He had married a young woman who worked in the office at USGS, a wonderful lady named Kim who my wife had taught in 5th grade. They were made of each other.

In his usual way, Tim had seen no roadblocks to what he wanted to do and soon was accepted to Stnaford Business School, from which he graduated with high honors and before too many years was the CEO of Unical Petroleum. For our part, we tried to keep Bits n' Pieces going with a couple new members but without Tim's presence it just wasn't the same.

Then one day I got some news. Tim had died suddenly in his office at Unical after a lunchtime hockey game. It was devestating for all who knew him.

I still think of him often and miss him greatly. What I learned, with his help, was the pure joy of playing music and how an audience and a band can feed off each others' energy. I think I'm still trying to recapture those moments.

A few more words about my time with fiddler Marie Rhines. One of the stops on our tour of the Northwest was a concert for the Seattle Folklore Society.There is a very hardcore folkie community out there, or there was then, and we noticed a young guy about 15 years old sitting in the front row with his parents. After the concert the head of the folk music society introduced us. This kid is an amazing fiddler, the guy said. He has his fiddle with him - maybe you can play a tune with him. His name is Mark O'Conner.To be honest, I don't recall if I played along or it was just him and Marie but he was very good indeed. Mark of course went on to become the most in-demand fiddle player in Nashville and arguably the most famous fiddler in the folk world. He was pretty shy as I recall but in only a couple years he would go on to play with the great Stephane Grapelli, Chet Atkins and many others. I think he was instrumental (no pun intended!) in helping Marie get studio work in Nashville years later.

A couple years later Marie dumped me quite unceremoniously for Tony Rice, as I mentioned in the previous entry. She went on to experiment with jazz, playing for a time with the highly influential bassist Miroslav Vitous and then moved to Nashville where she met and played with the likes of Chet Atkins, Tammy Wynette, and others. She was the last playing partner of one of the original "outlaws" and member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, Mickey Newbury. If you search YouTube you will find an amazing video of them playing his famous "American Trilogy."

Something happened in Nashville though and Marie ended up living in Sedona, Arizona where she is today and enjoys a localized music career playing "Western" music - that is, cowboy type tunes. I have occasional contact with her and she always says our time together was the most pure fun she ever had playing. I sincerely appreciate our time together and we played before many thousands of people at dozens of festivals and concerts. It really taught me stage craft and the importance of putting on a professional and well-paced concert, plus what was involved with recording an album.

Back in Falmouth, I dove back into the local music scene and began to really push my guitar lessons. At one point in the early 1980s I was teaching 35 private students a week. I also was briefly involved with teaching at the Cape Cod Conservatory but when they demanded I "hand over" my private students to them or discontinue teaching on my own I left that association.

About that time I was asked to join a group of people, singers mostly, who all worked at the U.S. Geological Survey in Woods Hole. Their interest was 50s and early 60s rock n' roll and they called themselves The Geotones. Before long, the group grew to include sax, keys, bass, sometimes another guitar and singers numbering anywhere from 6 to 10! Although it was definitely a loose bunch with varying degrees of ability, it was the first time I was asked to do multi part arranging and finally all that music theory I learned in college was put to use!

We played mostly for free at various local functions but the most fun was playing every August for quite a few years at the finish line of the famous Falmouth Road Race. We set up on a flatbed trailer overlooking the huge crowd. It was the height of American domination of professional road racing and we met people like Bill Rodgers, Alberto Salazaar, and others. Tons of fun!

About the time I was getting pretty disgusted with the playing scene on the Cape I was introduced to Marie Rhines. Marie was a classically trained violinist who had decided to delve into traditional fiddle music. We hit it off immediately and began practicing furiously. It turned out that Marie was able to secure concerts for us almost immediately and that was due to two things: her drive and most of all, her immense talent. I know now that I will most likely never again play for any length of time with a musician of her ability. It was an amazing few years.

One of our first concerts was at Rockefeller University in downtown Manhattan. I think Marie had arranged that due to having been a private student of Joseph Silverstein, then the concertmaster of the Boston Symphony and leader of the BSO String Quartet. The first half of the concert was Marie doing solo classical pieces. I had never heard her play that music before and to say it was awesome would be a gross understatement. We then proceeded to play our mix of Irish, French Canadian and Bluegrass fiddle music. The staid classical audience went nuts.

Soon after that we began hitting the New England fiddle contest circuit where one of two things inevitably happened. Marie would either win the contest or not even make the first cut. Sounds strange, eh? You bet. The bottom line was that she was just.... too good. I clearly remember one contest in which she was rejected after our first set of tunes (a jig, a waltz, a reel - the strict rules of the "open division" in serious fiddle contests) and she demanded to know why. One of the judges said to her (exact quote here): "You're no fiddler! You're a violinist! You should give this up!" What had happened was Marie had played the reel TOO WELL. It was a difficult tune filled with triplets, and instead of slurring the notes together and sounding "authentic" (i.e., sloppy) she had played them all perfectly and the judges mistakenly though the 4/4 reel was a fast 3/4 waltz! Marie was distraught and pissed off, as well she should have been.

As we drove back - I believe the contest was somewhere in northern Vermont - Marie was still steaming. At that one we also had my good friend Glen Carlberg playing stand-up bass with us.

"You know what we're going to do?" Marie said as we drove toward the Massachusetts border, "We're going to go play with Arlo Guthrie! I know he is headlining an outdoor concert in the Berkshires today!"

"What???!" I said. "How....? We can't just walk in and play with Arlo!"

"Oh don't worry about it," she said. "I've known Arlo for a long time. He'll let us play."

Well, this was news to me, to say the least! But Marie often came up with surprises like this. So an hour later we were driving down a road into the backstage area of the concert, with Marie rolling down the window and telling the security people: We go on in a few minutes! I'm Marie Rhines! I'm a friend of Arlo's!

And damn if they didn't let us through.

We arrived backstage. The stage was set up in a huge field. Someone was on stage playing but I don't remember who. Then Marie spotted the man himself.

Now, you have to understand: this was about 1976 and Arlo was a bonafide star in the folk-rock world. "Arlo!" Marie shouted.

"Marie!" Arlo shouted, and she ran up to him and gave him a big hug. Glen and I stood there dumbfounded.

"When do we go on?!" Marie asked.

"Well, how about right after this song?" said Arlo.

Two minutes later we were climbing up the stairs to go on stage. I looked out at the audience that must have numbered well into the thousands. Glen and I looked at each other. We hadn't even had time to tune up.

Marie strode up to the microphone.

"Hi, I'm Marie Rhines! My friends and I just got back from a fiddle contest in Vermont and I was disqualified because the judges said I played this tune too well and nobody could dance to it! What do you think??!!"

And with that she attacked the double-stop 4-beat intro and we dove into the song.

Almost as one there was a roar from the crowd, and they stood up and began clapping along and dancing! I glanced over at the side of the stage and Arlo was standing there, grinning. I thought I was going to faint.

I don't remember how many tunes we played. It was only a few I think. It was all over before I could even fathom what we'd done. The crowd went nuts when we walked off the stage.

"Thanks, Arlo!" said Marie.

"Anytime, darlin'!" said Arlo. And we hopped back in the car and drove home. I don't think I stopped grinning the whole way back.

There were many, many other adventures with Marie, many big concerts, tours to the Pacific Northwest (which included a cross country bus ride for me - I could fill a dozen blog entries with stories of those five days!) and the South, finally a week and half recording "The Reconciliation" for Philo/Fretless Records in their amazing recording studio overlooking snow covered pastures and mountains in Vermont.

In the end, Marie replaced me with no warning with...... Tony Rice! Another of her contacts that I knew nothing about until the day she informed me I was out.

I was heartbroken and more than a little POed at the time, but hey, it was TONY FRIGGIN' RICE!!! My only satisfaction came when I heard them play a concert and she had obviously asked him to learn a tune that I finger picked on the album - and he tried to do it with a flatpick, and as God is my witness, his version wasn't as good as mine! Tony, possibly the greatest acoustic flatpicker who has ever lived, could not finger pick and did a barely passable job on MY part! Ego is a destructive thing sometimes, but in that case I felt some measure of satisfaction!

After getting married, Kathy and I moved to Falmouth where she had secured a teaching job. I was used to having a huge number of places to play in the city and it was pretty depressing to find that in spite of being a vacation area there were not a lot of choices in my new home area. One of my first gigs was at a bar in downtown Falmouth where a playing partner and I were made to play directly beneath a TV that always seemed to have a hockey game on - and you can guess what the patrons wanted to hear and watch (and it wasn't a rendition of some old blues tune!).

I learned very quickly the realities of playing in local bars - the rude drunks, the sleazy bar owners who often disappeared when it was time to pay, and the sad fact that bar owners always view musicians as the most expendable employees in the place.

One day I was talking with my dad about this and he said: "Two things to remember. 'If business is good, it's the food! If business is bad, it's the band!' and ALWAYS COUNT THE MONEY!" These turned out to be truly words of wisdom.

For a couple years I did the Ground Round circuit in southern Massachusetts. I don't know if Ground Rounds still exist because there are certainly none around here now - and for good reason. A precursor to the TGIFridays and 99 restaurants of today, they at least hired singles, duos and trios who played primarily listening rather than dancing music. But I swear, there must have been a box on the application for manager of those places where if you checked "asshole" you were sure to get the job. Again, a learning experience but at least I was playing out. Unfortunately, it made becoming cynical about the local music business very easy and I confess that I became one of the bigger cynics around.

The final straw for that period of my musical life came when I went up to New Hampshire during ski season for what I was told would be a decent paying 4-night engagement, only to find that the owner of a very popular place in North Conway intended to pay my less than half what he had agreed to. "I would hire a trained monkey to bang on a guitar if he's do it for $25 a night," he said with a smile. I got back in my car and drove home.

Fortunately, not long after that I was introduced to a fiddle player named Marie Rhines. Over the course of the next three years we played some wonderful concerts, festivals, toured the Pacific Northwest and recorded an album for Philo/Fretless Records. It was and amazing experience and as close as I came to wider recognition. That story will be for tomorrow.

My first appearance before a large crowd was at a rally to protest the war in Vietnam. It was held in Wilkes Barre, PA where I was in college. There were at least a thousand people there and somehow I was asked to play a song between the firebrand speakers. Now, by this point I knew a few "protest" songs, including "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" - taught to my friend Barry Greenhalgh and I by Pete Seeger himself as we sat on the grass at Newport - but while I supported the cause, for some reason I just didn't feel like playing an angry tune that day.

I had just learned a song called "Come On, Sunshine" which was written by my friend Ken Richards and decided to play that. It was a bouncy little song, probably written for a hippie chick named Sunshine who ran a small boutique in Mystic. She also did leather work and made a beautiful guitar strap for me that I still have. Anyway....

It was pretty terrifying to look out on such a big crowd who were waiting for me to play. I stepped up to the mic and took a deep breath and started strumming. I think they thought they were going to hear some protest song and I could see within one verse that a lot of them were losing interest. But I kept banging away.

When I finished there was polite applause and one of the leaders of the rally quickly reclaimed the mic. I knew my days of singing at peace rallies were probably over, at least in Wilkes Barre, but then something wonderful happened. A young woman walked up to me and with a smile said how much she had enjoyed the song and my performance. She also mentioned how it was nice to hear something positive in a format that was (naturally) very negative. Lesson learned: Even in depressing circumstances, a song that conveys hope and good feelings can strike something positive in people. That is no doubt the idea behind the brass players parading down the streets in New Orleans playing joyous music after a funeral. I've tried to remember this when constructing set lists ever since.

After leaving college I decided that I needed to move to Boston if I was ever going to reach a wider audience and meet other players. It was the classic "big fish from a small pond" experience, right off the bat. I began haunting the coffee houses and bars in Boston, Cambridge, Allston and other areas. There was plenty of opportunity to meet other musicians and also plenty of new music to hear.

One night at the Sword in the Stone (a wonderful little coffee house, now long gone) I heard a woman singer/songwriter named Elizabeth Kent. I asked her if she'd ever consider playing with another guitarist and she was all for it. We went on to play many places around the city, culminating in a week-long engagement at Passim, then and now one of the most important venues for acoustic music in the country.

As I sat in the tiny dressing room at Passim, tuning up before our opening performance I really felt the vibe of that tiny room. Who had sat here tuning their guitar? Dylan, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Tom Rush, James Taylor and many, many others. It was a heady experience. We went over well at Passim, opening for an interesting cult figure of the folk movement named Sandy Bull. He played guitar but also obscure string instruments like the oud. His bass player (whose name I've forgotten) and I got along famously and we even hung out with them one night after a performance.

At the same time I was still running an ad in the Boston Phoenix - "Lead guitarist available." One day I got a phone call.

"Hi. My name is Jon Pousette-Dart and I need a lead player. I have a major record contract and Don Law is my manager. I'm going to be famous. I want to hear you play."

Yikes. This was pretty intimidating to say the least! He came over to my apartment that day. When he walked in it was even more intimidating. With that West Coast look (very much like Jackson Browne) he sat down and pulled out his guitar. No smile, no how-are-ya, nothing. Just play something, he said and he began strumming one of his songs.

I don't think I'd played more than a minute when he abruptly stopped.

"No," he said. "You're not the one. I have Don Law's money behind me and a contract and I'm going to find the best lead player in Boston." And with that he shook his head, sneered, packed up hsi guitar and left.

A year or so later he did attain some measure of fame and yes, he did find a very fine lead player. But I had learned another lesson. There is absolutely no need to be a jerk, no matter how good you may be. Players who may not be up to your standards have feelings too. So cut them some slack, and try to remember why you're playing music.

Attending the original Newport Folk Festival four times in the 1960s was amazing and wonderful. Newport in those days was quite different than it is today. One of the most vital aspects and the intent of the organizers was to encourage one-to-one contact between the performers and the audience. Making it even better for me was having as friends of our family a wonderful couple named Wes and Dori Rooker. They had moved to Newport when Wes was offered a job teaching music at a very exclusive private school - and the grounds of the school were used for the morning and afternoon concerts and workshops the first year I attended. Wes was the Purser for the festival (the person who handed out the checks to the performers - which totaled on average about $200 per performer!) and through him I was able to meet many of the greats of folk, blues and many others.

I've written about some of those experiences here so I won't go into them now but suffice to say I learned things about guitar playing and performance (and personality qualities and detriments) that it took me years to appreciate. It was a magical time in the history of American music, one that would impossible to duplicate today.

Meanwhile I was doing more performing by myself and with others. Quite a few local churches ran "coffee houses" in their basements, which were a great way to learn how to perform and try out the songs I'd been learning, in front of an audience. In my hometown of Mystic, Connecticut we also had a small concert club/coffee house/hang-out called The River Shack. Run by some honest-to-God hippies (not the wannabes like my friends and I!) it was located on the docks in downtown Mystic in a funky old fishermens' shack, now long gone and replaced by multi million dollar condos.

We thought it was just about the coolest place in our little world. I played on the small stage a couple times but learned for the first time that maybe, just maybe wanting something wasn't always enough. To put it honestly, I just wasn't good enough and the hippies who ran the place were kind enough to us until it came time to actually get on stage when they hoped to get a paying audience. That one hurt, I have to say. But it also pissed me off enough to practice even harder.

One of the performers who frequented the stage was a guy named Randy Burns, with his Sky Dog Band, from New Haven. The first time I heard him I knew he had "it." Tall, thin, long brown hair and beard with striking features and one of those high country/folk voices that was guaranteed to make the hippie girls and hippie girl wannabes in attendance almost swoon. Was I jealous?! (!!!)

Randy went on a year or so later to get a contract with Mercury Records, at the time one of the big national companies. But then something happened.

The River Shack had closed, for what reason I'll never know, but someone organized a concert by Randy in the auditorium at the local Catholic church. I was so looking forward to it! But when the day came and Randy took the stage everyone could sense something was not quite right. He swayed slightly as he approached the microphone, and mumbled a few words, then tried to tune his guitar. And tried, And tried. And it got worse and worse. Finally, he muttered a few words that most likely had NEVER been heard in that church before and staggered off the stage, not to return. We were stunned.

Some months later I heard from a musician friend that he was losing the battle with the bottle and had all but been thrown off stage after stage and told never to return. In recent years I've learned that Randy did recover and has made himself a nice little music career in the New Haven area, where he still has fans.

This incident was first (but sadly, not the last) time I saw up close how damaging alcohol and later, drugs could be to someone with everything going, musically speaking. A hard lesson and one that I've never forgotten.

Yes, that is me. The year was (I believe) 1968. The place was Ram Island, off the mouth of the Mystic River. My favorite place in the whole world at the time. The guitar belonged to a friend of mine, Beth Rathbun, who also provided the PB&J sandwich, if memory serves. Great times, long long ago in a galaxy far, far away as the movie says.

Rewind a couple years. Not long after I refused to pick up the drum sticks any more I happened to be visiting my grandfather and one of the coolest places in his small home in Groton was his attic. Up there you could find various instruments lying around, a big wooden steamer trunk that held his WWI uniform, various other cool things. But what caught my eye was a dusty little Stella guitar in the corner. A few weeks before I had put down $10 of my paper route money on a no-name guitar at the local music store, with the hopes of paying it off soon (it cost about $40 I think). That was becoming increasingly unlikely though as I was in junior high school and buying cool clothes to impress the girls - a failed mission - was taking all my spare cash.

So I asked my grandfather if I could "borrow" the guitar. I had been introduced to folk music by a wonderful couple, Wes and Dori Rooker. Wes was the choir director at our church. He went on to become the purser of the Newport Folk Festival - more on that later. I really, really wanted to learn how to play the guitar, not only to play the Peter, Paul and Mary songs I was listening to, but also to prove to my dad that I was NOT a musical failure or a quitter.

My grandfather said sure, take the guitar. I was thrilled.

Now, I often tell parents of prospective students that the single most discouraging aspect of learning to play for a youngster is trying to make music with a bad guitar. And that Stella was the poster child of bad guitars. Rusty strings, and having spent many years up in that attic the neck was warped and the action so high that it was all but unplayable. However, I was determined and after putting on a new set of strings I dove into the struggle.

Fortunately, I had a couple friends who were also taking up the guitar and they and I supported each others' efforts (with of course the natural competitiveness of 13 year old boys!). I'm pretty sure the first song I could play beginning to end was "Five Hundred Miles" as played by my heros, Peter, Paul and Mary. I have no doubt that my family got really, really tired of hearing "Five Hundred Miles" for the 500th time!

That summer I had my first "gig." Well, it wasn't exactly a gig, but a performance. I was made to attend a summer camp (Episcopal of course!) which I HATED but my camp counselor saw that guitar and decided I was to represent our cabin in the talent show.

Terror. Pure Terror. "Five Hundred Miles" wouldn't do for some reason, so with another boy singing we decided to tackle the second song I knew, "Stewball." The problem was, I couldn't change chords. So on the evening of the performance, it went something like this. "Oh Stewball was a race horse," (stop, long pause while I changed chords) "and I wish he was..." (another long pause...damn that D minor!) "...mine, "He never drank..." (stop. Change to G7) "...water, he always drank...." (stop. back to C), "...wi..." (stop), "...iiiii..." (stop) "...ine!..." And then another FOUR painful verses. oh...my...god.

But when we finished, an amazing thing happened. The other kids and the councelors clapped! They actually clapped!. What the heck?! I think that was the moment that I knew I was going to be a guitarist.

We came in third, out of five acts. The winner was a kid who played trombone and could play a high note, slide down to a low note, then back up to the high note, which the assembled masses thought was hilarious. I have hated trombones ever since.

Yesterday marked my two-year anniversary of playing at the Daily Brew cafe in Cataumet. It is absolutely my favorite gig ever, for a lot of reasons. As I was packing up to go home I spoke with one of the young women who work there about how much we both like being there, due mostly to the warm and welcoming atmosphere that the owner Kathy Hickey has created.

As I drove home I began reflecting on the many places I've played over the years, the musicians I've known, the experiences I've had - and what they taught me. I decided to at least partially catalog them here. To be honest, I've forgotten about many and the details are fuzzy about others. But bear with me. This will probably take up a few blog entries and I hope what you'll read won't turn out to be too boring. The bottom line is that I'm doing this as much for myself as for my readers' entertainment.

So I'll start from the start.

My family has been musicians for many generations, going back (at least) to my great grandfather who played clarinet with the original P.T Barnum Circus band in 1888 - 1890. My grandfather conducted the Army Band; my uncle played trumpet with the Fred Waring Orchestra in the 1930s and my dad was a very fine professional drummer who toured extensively with Big Bands in the 1940s, after which he continued to gig locally for many years. My brother plays trumpet with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. So as you can see, my fate was sealed as far as music was concerned.

My first instrument was the drums, not surprisingly. It is no accident that I'm named Gene as Gene Krupa was my dad's favorite drummer. I began playing when I was about 5 years old, learning the strict rudimentary system of drumming. So strict in fact that I was not allowed to play an actual drum until I'd spent a couple years perfecting my flams and paradiddles and seven-stroke rolls on a rubber-topped practice pad. My dad, while one of the kindest and funniest people I've ever known was as Old School as they come when it came to learning a musical instrument: this is WORK, dammit! Get it right!

It was such a strict regimen that I was required to practice for at least a half hour every day when I got home from school, while my friends were in the field behind our house in Mystic, Connecticut playing ball. By the time I reached age 12 I was a pretty darn good drummer - but I hated it. After a terrible experience playing in a junior fife and drum corp (that music being another of my dad's passions - he was the drum section leader in the Deep River Ancient Fife & Drum Corps) I decided one day to quit playing the drums. My father was devastated but I had learned something: to teach a musical instrument effectively the student needs to WANT to play, and the only way that could be accomplished was by positive reinforcement from the teacher, which results in the student feeling good about their playing.

I was discussing with a student last night the in and outs of performance. I later remembered a blog post I made a few months ago in a different format and I thought I'd revisit it here. I'd be interested to know what you think. Here it is:Interesting thread on one of the guitar forums I follow, regarding the function of the performer. It made me stifle my natural cynicism because the vast majority of the contributors were obviously new comers to the world of music performance, or rather inexperienced, which was clearly a function of youth. Many bemoaned the fact that they are viewed as "wallpaper" in most of the places they play. Welcome to professional music on the local level. Oops, there goes my cynicism again.A few posts ago I went on about just why it is that I play in front of people. Today's observations are partially about that but mostly about what I think the audience hears (or doesn't hear) and the relative merit of that. Why anyone plays is totally personal and often quite complex. What many performers don't understand for a long time is that bouncing their own feelings about what and why they are playing off the reaction they get from an audience is a recipe for disappointment. And no, I am NOT being cynical now. It's just the way of the world where music performance is concerned.Here's what I've observed over the years of playing everywhere from tiny dive bars with a few drunks hanging onto bar stools, to coffee shops with very serious listeners, to colleges, concert clubs and huge music festivals.

First you have to differentiate between venues where people have paid to listen to music and places where they encounter music but have not paid anything (directly) for the music to be there.In a concert situation, assuming the performer is good or at least what the audience expected, it's easy to predict what the reaction will be. This is especially true with very well known performers. Their audiences tend to be the most forgiving. Now, well known most likely means they've been around for a while - and so have their audience. In other words, the audience is more mature. I absolutely believe: the younger the audience, the more difficult to please.

In contrast, older audiences will forgive a lot and at the same time are even more adoring if a performer with whom they have had a long term relationship still has "it." I remember watching a televised live performance by Frank Sinatra near the end of his career. I watched it with my dad, who was a great jazz drummer. Sinatra was at best a shadow of his former greatness but the audience went wild at the end of every tune. I commented on this, saying something about how much he had lost "it" but wondering aloud why his audience was so forgiving. You have to understand, my dad said, they are not hearing him now, they are hearing him then.

Now let's look at the other end of the spectrum, the day-to-day player - we won't even call him or her professional because that implies they are making a living from their playing and that is hardly ever the case. Here's what he encounters.

What I call the "non-committed listener" is most commonly encountered. This person is usually sitting with one or more others who are also non-committed. They talk quietly or sometimes loudly; sometimes they are tending to children; sometimes they are reading or doing something on a laptop. They hardly ever clap at the end of a tune but sometimes will in a half-hearted way if someone else in the room (the "committed listener" - more on these later) starts the clapping. The non-committed listener ("NCL") can be very, very frustrating to someone with little playing experience but is accepted and sometimes even welcomed by well-seasoned performers. Why these reactions?

Wait a minute, you say. How do you know they are listening at all? Excellent question and one that someone new to performing cannot answer with any degree of certainty. It might be something very subtle like a nod or a smile (if you're lucky) or even just simple eye contact. Maybe that person stops as he's leaving and makes a comment about how much he liked the music or better yet, puts a dollar or two in the tip glass. The absolute best kind of NCL in my opinion is one who takes the time to mention to the manager or owner of the establishment how much he enjoyed the music. And then tells his friends about it and returns the next week!

To the budding performer the NCL is annoying and frustrating. I felt those things way back when. When I see a younger performer encountering it, it's always interesting to see how he handles the situation. Does he get louder and more intrusive? That'll make 'em listen, dammit! Does he begin to get sloppy in his playing - vague beginnings and endings, long gaps between songs? These things will NOT have the desired affect but hey, pearls before swine and all that. One thing is for sure - the management WILL notice and the performer's tenure will be short indeed.

Then you have that most desirable audience member: the Committed Listener. Unfortunately there are damn few of these, most of the time. A subset of the CL group are the Dancers. Performers love them, especially if they get on the dance floor early and often. But we're not really talking about dancers here - we're talking about performers who are offering something for the mind rather than the body. CL's always have a reason they are listening. In a perfect world it is because they are music lovers and get great pleasure from being in the presence of someone creating music. Most CL's have at least a little of that. In other cases they may be a friend or relative of the performer (good - the most loyal and forgiving CL there is); a fan of the particular style of music or the artist's work being performed (also good - remember what I said above about not hearing it now but rather hearing it then ?); someone who plays the same instrument or sings the same song (potentially either good or bad, depending upon whether or not the CL thinks he or she is better than the performer).

When I read threads like the one on that guitar forum or hear musicians complain about being "wallpaper" I force myself to take a giant step back and consider the most basic question. What value or level of importance does the music have in a non-concert setting?

Here's what I think. To most people, music is a pleasant diversion. It is something that may even be a regular part of their lives but do they really LISTEN the way a player does? Probably not. When most of us sit down for a meal in a restaurant, do we scrutinize and evaluate our meal? No - not often, even in a very good restaurant serving exceptionally good food. We may take pleasurable notice of it through the meal but most of us don't really want to watch the chef preparing the dish or evaluate the process. We sure do notice when it's bad though! And that is where we do think about the chef, and not kindly. Inexperienced musicians who are frustrated by an unresponsive audience and decide to put on a sloppy performance should keep this in mind.

It's taken me the better part of forty years to come to this conclusion but you know what? If music (and my performance of it) is nothing more than a pleasant background addition to their overall experience, THAT'S OK!!!!! I hope I'm confident and at ease with my own playing to the extent that constant affirmation is not necessary. Nice once in a while, yes. And appreciated. But the reason I'm out there doing it? Not by a freakin' long shot!

How much do you practice? What happens when you do? What are your expectations? How do you measure your success and/or progress?

Without a doubt the single most-asked question I hear from new students is - how much should I practice? The answer is harder than you might think. It's natural to try to put a quantitative value on the amount of effort we put into just about anything we do and playing the guitar is no different. With beginners that question is legitimate because they want to succeed (of course!) but also because we all live busy lives and to commit a finite amount of time to anything usually means taking time away from some other aspects of our lives. So, when I'm figuratively backed into a corner and have to answer that question for a beginner I usually say something like a half-hour to an hour a day.

What any musician has to keep in mind is that in the most basic sense, playing an instrument is exercise. And like all exercise, a moderate amount on a frequent basis is much, much better than a LOT on an infrequent basis. I've had some very interesting conversations with very good musicians about their practice habits. My brother John, who is a trumpet player with the Malaysian Philharmonic practices a lot, which is a necessity because his instrument is very demanding physically. On the other hand, I had a long correspondence a few years ago with a very fine jazz guitarist from Indiana who admitted he doesn't practice at all, his explanation being that his gigging keeps him in shape. I guess I can understand that because with playing for two years at the Daily Brew I am playing as well as I ever have and I only need to warm up for a few minutes to get ready to give lessons each day.

However, if I did practice more often I would surely be a better player, if not in terms of technical facility at least in terms of repertoire. This is something that is a very slippery slope. The more we play what we know, the better or at least the more confident about that material we become. This leads to the comfort of just playing what we know. I have a list of about two dozen acoustic guitar instrumentals that I want to learn but that list has been sitting on my desk for over six months. It's just laziness, pure and simple. I know I'd better jump into those tunes pretty soon though because in a few short months it will be fishing season again and that will take all my time when I'm not teaching or performing. Learning new material helps our overall playing in ways that are not very obvious but are essential to progress.

One of the things that can make practicing so frustrating is that we sometimes feel we are playing better at the beginning of the practice session than at the end! This is true of all players regardless of their ability level. The fact is, we are playing better as the session progresses, but we tend to hear mistakes the longer we play, mistakes that were easily overlooked when we started the practice session. I always tell my students to figure out why they are making a mistake, or stopping when they should be keeping a steady beat. The danger is that repeatedly practicing something with the idea that massive amounts of repetition will solve a problem leads to just practicing our mistakes. You must figure out what the problem is before you can solve it.

Another frustrating aspect of practicing is the self-evaluation process. I've often said that I wish I could do my first year or so of learning the guitar all over again, if for no other reason than I could see progress on a weekly or even daily basis. Now, after playing for better than four decades, I have to measure my progress in terms of "what can I play this YEAR that I couldn't play last year?" (!) That requires a lot of faith in the learning process, to say the least! This is why I often tell more experienced players to record something that is giving them trouble, then stash that recording for a couple months. After that time has passed, listen to it and I can almost guarantee that you will hear progress. This is very gratifying.

So if time allows, dedicate a certain amount of time practice every day, even if it is only a few minutes. Challenge yourself for as least part of the practice session; don't just slip back into playing the same old, same old. And don't worry about how quickly you grasp a concept or manage a difficult passage or song. It will happen in time. Have faith!